Ailey

Alvin Ailey, whose dance company will open its North American tour in Clearwater Friday, has been selected to receive the $25,000 1987 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival award. The largest annual award in the performing arts, the Scripps award was established in 1981 to honor the lifetime contributions of American modern dance choreographers. It will be presented June 7 at the American Dance Festival in Durham, N.C.In Clearwater, the company will present three different programs at 8 p.m. Friday and 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, at Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen- Booth Road.

Central Floridians will see the results of a residency this past January by an Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre alumnus at Valencia College at not one, but two, dance programs. Valencia and Rollins Dance collaborated on their spring recitals, which will both feature work choreographed by Derrick Minter, formerly of Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, an Ailey II rehearsal director and current teaching artist for Ailey's Dance Foundation Arts in Education programs/Professor of Modern at Oklahoma University.

Last November, Judith Jamison was headed for a Clearwater performance with her new modern dance company based in New York, The Jamison Project. In an interview, she sang the praises of Alvin Ailey, who 30 years earlier founded a primarily black modern dance company and went on to become one of America's most popular dance-makers.''He is the history-maker who encouraged us all to go on to do what we have to in this life and in this art,'' said Jamison, who for 15 years was Ailey's equivalent of a prima ballerina.

The artistic director who has helped shape the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for nearly two decades says she plans to retire. Judith Jamison said she will step down in 2011. She joined the New York-based modern-dance company in 1965 and became artistic director in 1989, shortly after founder Alvin Ailey's death. Jamison is 64. During her tenure, the ensemble has created a bachelor's degree program with Fordham University, expanded its schedule and built a headquarters in Manhattan.

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was associated so strongly with Ailey's dances and his mission to bring black dancers into the American mainstream, that one wondered whether the company would lose its direction after his death Dec. 1.Instead, it is dancing with a fervor that seems to prove its late leader's goals transcend his passing. The performance given Friday night at the King Center for the Performing Arts in Melbourne was, in a word, phenomenal. Three additional programs will be presented Friday and Saturday at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater.

By Elizabeth Maupin and Diane Hubbard Burns of the Sentinel Staff, February 1, 1987

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will open its North American tour with three performances Friday and Saturday at Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen-Booth Road in Clearwater. The Clearwater performances will include three new pieces: Caverna Magica, choreographed by Ailey to the music of Andreas Vollenweider; Witness, choreographed by Ailey to traditional songs sung by Jessye Norman; and Bad Blood, choreographed by Ulysses Dove to music by Laurie Anderson. Other Ailey standards such as Cry, Revelations and The Lark Ascending also will be on the programs.

There are many good reasons to see the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble, which opened last night at Rollins College's Annie Russell Theatre in Winter Park.Twelve of those reasons are the extraordinarily talented and expressive young performers in this group that serves as a bridge between training and membership in the famed Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre or other dance companies.But probably the best reason is the opportunity to steep yourself in Ailey's evergreen choreography. Ailey, who died in 1989, made the black experience a part of mainstream modern dance, and did so in such an artful, accessible way that his dances appeal to audiences everywhere.

JUDITH JAMISON, a former dancer in the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater who left to work on Broadway and form her own group, was named Wednesday as Ailey's successor as artistic director of the company. Ailey, who founded the dance company 31 years ago, died Dec. 1. Jamison told reporters at the company's school in New York that, earlier this year, Ailey told her he wanted her to succeed him. ''He said, 'You're going in another direction now.' '' She said, ''It's like coming home to a place I've been in my heart for years, even if I haven't been here physically.

You go to an Ailey II performance thinking you know what you will get: An entree of Alvin Ailey's modern dance classics served up with a little something on the side by a young band of dynamo dancers. So it's a surprise when the "something on the side" knocks your socks off in the way choreographer Robert Battle's The Hunt did at the Ailey opening Friday at Rollins College. This new (2002) dance by the Miami native and Julliard graduate shot those in the audience forward nearly half a century, from the modern style hammered out by Ailey in the late 1950s to a modern style for a new age: raw, edgy, ethnic, and unruly.

CHOREOGRAPHER ALVIN Ailey has quietly resigned his $80,000-a-year professorship at the City University of New York following complaints he paid others to teach his ballet and modern-dance classes, the New York Post reported this week. ''He showed up once and watched us perform. That was it,'' said Heidi Worrell, a dance student quoted by the Post. Distinguished professors at CUNY must spend some time teaching; the university forbids the use of surrogate teachers, the newspaper said. Ailey resigned Sept.

You go to an Ailey II performance thinking you know what you will get: An entree of Alvin Ailey's modern dance classics served up with a little something on the side by a young band of dynamo dancers. So it's a surprise when the "something on the side" knocks your socks off in the way choreographer Robert Battle's The Hunt did at the Ailey opening Friday at Rollins College. This new (2002) dance by the Miami native and Julliard graduate shot those in the audience forward nearly half a century, from the modern style hammered out by Ailey in the late 1950s to a modern style for a new age: raw, edgy, ethnic, and unruly.

When Alvin Ailey died in 1989, he left a legacy of more than 30 years of dancing, 79 works, a school and two companies, and countless dancers for whom he served as teacher, director, mentor or inspiration. But numbers don't begin to describe the reason Ailey's works continue to win audiences today. That is due to a quality in his dances that can be summed up in one word: Humanity. "His prime interest was people," says Sylvia Waters, artistic director of Ailey II, junior company to the world-renowned Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

A PULLED muscle on his throwing side may have pushed Matt Lytle out of contention for the No. 1 quarterback slot.Lytle started in nine games last season. He ran a close second to quarterback Pete Gonzalez after spring drills and again through the first few days of the preseason.But on Tuesday, the 6-foot-4, 230-pound Lytle was injured. He can run, but throwing is painful.''I woke up Monday morning and couldn't even move my upper body,'' Lytle said. ''I don't know if it's partially torn or just pulled or what.

There are many good reasons to see the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble, which opened last night at Rollins College's Annie Russell Theatre in Winter Park.Twelve of those reasons are the extraordinarily talented and expressive young performers in this group that serves as a bridge between training and membership in the famed Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre or other dance companies.But probably the best reason is the opportunity to steep yourself in Ailey's evergreen choreography. Ailey, who died in 1989, made the black experience a part of mainstream modern dance, and did so in such an artful, accessible way that his dances appeal to audiences everywhere.

Rollins College wrapped up its fifth annual dance series Friday and Saturday nights with two sold-out performances by the exuberant Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble at the college's Annie Russell Theatre in Winter Park.The second-string training company affiliated with Ailey's renowned Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre in fact has no second-string dancers. These are full-fledged young artists who already have cultivated the extroversion and versatility that have helped make their parent company famous.

A few tickets are left for the April 13 and 14 performances of the Alvin Ailey Repertory Dance Ensemble at Rollins College's Annie Russell Theatre in Winter Park.The 15-member ensemble - established to give up-and-coming young dancers performing experience - will present two programs at Rollins: at 8 p.m. Friday, Ailey's Streams and ISBA and Katherine Posin's Hunger and Thirst; and at 8 p.m. Saturday, ISBA, Kamaloca (by Nicholas Rodriguez), and Ailey's signature piece, Revelations.Remaining tickets are $15, available from the college at (407)

GO FISH. The annual Grant Seafood Festival, which draws visitors from all over the state, will be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday in Grant, on U.S. Highway 1 between Melbourne and Vero Beach. The centerpiece of the festival is food - a dinner of fish, oysters, hush puppies, beans and coleslaw for $6 - but there also will be entertainment, a craft show and a la carte food booths featuring such items as steamed clams, deviled crab and fried scallops. Grant is about 10 miles south of Melbourne; signs along U.S. 1 will direct visitors to parking lots.

A PULLED muscle on his throwing side may have pushed Matt Lytle out of contention for the No. 1 quarterback slot.Lytle started in nine games last season. He ran a close second to quarterback Pete Gonzalez after spring drills and again through the first few days of the preseason.But on Tuesday, the 6-foot-4, 230-pound Lytle was injured. He can run, but throwing is painful.''I woke up Monday morning and couldn't even move my upper body,'' Lytle said. ''I don't know if it's partially torn or just pulled or what.

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was associated so strongly with Ailey's dances and his mission to bring black dancers into the American mainstream, that one wondered whether the company would lose its direction after his death Dec. 1.Instead, it is dancing with a fervor that seems to prove its late leader's goals transcend his passing. The performance given Friday night at the King Center for the Performing Arts in Melbourne was, in a word, phenomenal. Three additional programs will be presented Friday and Saturday at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater.

GO FISH. The annual Grant Seafood Festival, which draws visitors from all over the state, will be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday in Grant, on U.S. Highway 1 between Melbourne and Vero Beach. The centerpiece of the festival is food - a dinner of fish, oysters, hush puppies, beans and coleslaw for $6 - but there also will be entertainment, a craft show and a la carte food booths featuring such items as steamed clams, deviled crab and fried scallops. Grant is about 10 miles south of Melbourne; signs along U.S. 1 will direct visitors to parking lots.